BackgroundThe pandemic of COVID-19 sets off public psychological crises and impacts social functioning. Prepandemic research has shown that as the mental resource wears out under long-term distress, empathy exhaustion will happen. While prosocial activities are positively linked to empathy, quantitative research on the pandemic's effect on empathy and prosocial willingness has been insu ciently examined.Prosocial behaviors are carried out during a life-threatening time to promote communication and encourage community members to survive emergencies such as food shortages and natural disasters.
MethodsThis study examined the shifts in emotion, empathy and prosocial behaviors between the pre-pandemic and pandemic era in China. Before (N = 520, 11/21/2019-11/23/2019) and after (N = 570, 2/23/2020-2/24/2020) the COVID-19 pandemic, we explored an empathy-driven prosociality relationship through an online task and questionnaires with a total of 1,190 participants. Chi-square test, independent samples ttests, linear regression analysis and correlation analysis were used for the data characteristics comparisons between the pre-outbreak and outbreak peak era datasets. Mediation and moderation models were also computed.